I know you've all been waiting with baited breath, so here it is: all the channels on the TV at the Hotel Tryp Bellver, Palma De Mallorca.
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confluence
Maybe it's because it's triangles week at Brand Tarot but I've been thinking in threes again. I've been working on some presentations (which hopefully I'll be able to share soon) and this diagram occurred to me. Not that it was particularly relevant to what I was writing about but you know how these things pop into your head.
I think what this describes is the world that planning is heading into, the world that overlaps with UI design, experience design, product design, media of all forms etc etc. I think the fact that ad planners have some facility in translating ideas between these worlds is why we're being sucked into all sorts of industries. What I like about the world of blogging is that you can see the thinking that other people in the culture/commerce/creativity overlap are doing.
That's it. This doesn't really go anywhere yet. Just thought I'd mention it.
questions for howies?
Here's a message from Caroline at Campaign:
"Campaign’s running its Yahoo! Big Ideas Chair interviews again this year and the first one’s with Dave Hieatt. He and his partner Claire quit their overpaid jobs and sold their house to set up Howies. I'd like to hear if you have any questions to throw at Dave. Ethical, media, business...it’s all valid. The interview’s on February 1 so please make it fast. Big thanks."
If you've got questions for Caroline to throw at Dave please stick them in the comments below. thanks.
three things
1. Plannersphere Rules
The plannersphere wiki seems to be up and running. Some good stuff on there all ready. A few people have already asked questions about policy and ettiquette and I wanted to be clear that the rules are as strict and concise as they are for coffee morning and APSotW ie - just get on with it. Anyone can contribute, you can add whatever you think's appropriate, don't worry about breaking it, if you can't think of anything to add there's always some tidying up to be done. But, remember this, if you've not added anything yourself you're not allowed to complain about what everyone else has done.
2. Jobs
There are a couple of interesting new jobs over there on the left, under distributed village notices. One from Chris is for an Art Director for goodtechnology. The other is M&C Saatchi in India looking for a planner. Personally, I'm tempted by both. The rules on job posts are equally clear. If you've got a job to offer people, let me know and I'll stick it up. All I ask is you let me know how it went.
3. Coffee
Luca and Valerio are organising coffee in Milan. They can't face mornings so it's aperitoffee. Details here. And Mr Crocodile is doing coffee in Normandy. It's a worldwide revolution.
electroplankton bath
Displacement activity really kicks in when I'm dead busy and it's the only time I find myself trying musical things these days, ie when I shouldn't be. Last night, when I should have been writing big presentations I started mucking about with electroplankton - playing it into GarageBand and seeing if you could get an effective bit of music out of it.
And the answer's No, not yet. But I think it should be do-able. I made a 6-minute bit of ambient dribbling which isn't unpleasant but isn't any better than something you'd buy from one of those CD stands at national monuments amongst the sounds of the forest. Hanenbow (above) does the plinky noises.
Luminloop does the sustained chords in an eno-stylee.
Volvoice does everything else, basically the strange background noises, which I did by playing what I'd done before into him (he's a kind of mutating sampler) and sending it back out to GarageBand. All I did was layer stuff on top of each other, no tweaking the loops or anything. Anyone can do it, frankly. Self-generating ambient music for spas and offices can't be far off. It was fun though. May not be fun to listen to but it was fun to make.
blogging as archive
Neil just sent me a copy of the very lovely w+k book of 2006. Which made me realise one of those little sideline advantages of blogging which I suspect will get more important over time; the sense that a blog is a handy, ready-made, personal corporate archive. And that's as important for businesses as it is for everyone else. I've worked on books and things like this before, companies are always wanting to do them and they're always a nightmare. No-one can remember when things happened, no-one knows where the pictures of the company picnic went, or who joined when, or where all the reviews of the ads went. Of course, if you're sticking all this stuff on the blog as you go, there it all is. Organised nicely by date. Brilliant. (I bet it was still a nightmare though, it is w+k after all, Neil?)
ideaspace
There's a great interview on the Resonance podcast (first part of three) with Alan Moore the bearded wizard of British comics
writing on glass
I've always wanted to write on glass. I wanted to do it when I saw people do it in the movies - in films set in the control room of naval control rooms, or miltary bases beneath mountains. I wanted to do it even more when they do it in CSI and programmes like that. It's how TV people can show you're thinking hard and still show your face. Well now Grant McCracken has found a way to do something about it. He's found these Bright Sticks which are apparently perfect for writing on windows.
Which I will be doing very soon.
consumer edited content
Here's last week's Campaign piece. (If you want to spam me, please note that they've got my email address wrong.) And here's the original text:
For the past couple of years it's been impossible to open a trade journal without being flooded with leaflets for conferences promising to reveal the secrets of Consumer Generated Content. How to harness it strategically, manage it effectively or simply worry about it in a slightly more informed manner. CGC promises to fall somewhere between the holy grail and manna from heaven in the desirability stakes. The punters make their own ads so they're bound to like them. And they cost nothing. And obviously they're going to be consumer-relevant, the consumers made them. How can it all go wrong? Just one thing. Not many consumers are going to be bothered to make content for you. There are very few doing it now, when it's new and novel, so when every brand in every supermarket features an ad-making competition the chances of any one brand getting anything decent are very, very slim. And, speaking as someone who's created the odd bit of digital content, I'm very clear why I'm doing it, for myself, my family and my friends, not for any brands. There are occasions when a brand might inspire me to do something, or might host something I've done, but it's not that often.
Consumer Edited Content is a better description of what most regular folk usefully do online; they point at the good stuff. They take the streams of garbage out there, from real people or mainstream media, and they help us sieve through it for the nuggets. They do it with tags, blogs or email or simply by allowing their own behaviour to be logged and shared through services like last.fm. And most interestingly, we're not far from seeing that phenomenon impact the way we watch TV. The Big Brother racism imbroglio was a form of Consumer Edited Content, it was the complaints and outrage of viewers (with digitally enhanced complaining technology like email and blogging) which led the charge, not the professional opinionaters. But if you thought that storm was quick, global and loud, wait until Joost has 10 million users. Joost.com is a new online/TV hybrid thingy with all sorts of clever technology under the hood, that adds social and community technologies to TV/video viewing, allowing the viewers to talk about programmes, point at the good ones and the bad ones and create their own channels, all in the same space. Channel 4 were palpably rubbish at reacting to the mediastorm they created with regular telly but will you be any better when your ad or your content gets talked about and edited out in a live, distributed context like Joost?
plannersphere wiki
Remember this post? About the perfect creative brief? There is an absolute ton of useful stuff in the comments and I keep thinking that I should do something about it. Go through them all, pull out the interesting examples and create a sort of uber-brief. But, at the moment I just think about it and feel guilty.
Then the other week I was inspired by Richard's coining of the term 'plannersphere' and went and registered plannersphere.com. (Hope that's OK Richard, if you want it, just let me know.) I was thinking we could build a wiki there and amass a beautiful pile of planning knowledge for all the planning children of the world. But, of course, I'm dead busy right now so I didn't do anything about it. Then, this morning, I read this post from Asi and thought I'd better get on with it. That's how ideas happen isn't it? Inspiration. Drifting. Kick up the arse. Action.
So, it's dead simple. I've put a plannersphere wiki on pbwiki. The password is huntington, in tribute to the master. Anyone can contribute. Let's make it good.